Everything is dying

The lectionary took me into Luke 8 this morning, and the account of the raising of Jairus's daughter.  I was struck again, as I have been before, by the drama of the story: the urgent pleading from Jairus which surely any parent can imagine; the nightmare delay as Jesus looks around for a sick woman who has touched him in the midst of the crowd; the messenger with his news of death and despair; the outrageous call from Jesus to believe in the face of death that all will be well; the mourners, whose wailing turns to mocking laughter when Jesus declares that the girl is not dead in spite of the clear evidence; the direct address to the corpse, calling life back in; and even the little detail that she was given something to eat.

But what I really took away from this morning was this: how we need the God of the resurrection.

It is, perhaps, a sign of my temperament that even in the midst of spring, with the evidence of new life all around, I still find myself thinking about the fact that everything is dying.  It is a fact, after all.  I don't mean this in the sense of the more alarmist ecologists of our culture - though I suspect those people might be worth listening to, at least a bit, and sometimes what passes for alarmism is just realism coming into contact with a lethargic and dismissive culture.  No, I don't mean that, I just mean the simple fact: everything that lives dies, and as far as we know the universe as a whole is also on track for (a very slow) death.

This is why gods who are bound up with the creation are no good to us.  Gods who exists within the cycle of life and death - which is in fact not a cycle, but a spiral downwards - won't suit our need.  Even gods of healing alone are not enough.

We need a God who can enable us to look death in the face and to hear his voice saying: do not be afraid; only believe.  And we need a God who has demonstrated that even at the utter end of everything - even in death - he is able to reach out a hand and recall us to life.

We need the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the God of the resurrection.

The knowledge of the Holy Trinity

The lectionary prescribed Luke 10:21-24 as part of the reading yesterday, and I'm struck by how beautifully trinitarian this passage is.  It begins with the Lord Jesus rejoicing in the Holy Spirit and praising the Father - so there already you have the three divine Persons.  Why is the Lord rejoicing?  At first glance it appears to be because God has concealed the truth from the wise and intelligent and revealed it to those who are, metaphorically, infants - the low status folk, the ones with nothing special to offer.  And that is surely part of it: God's plan is playing out, as the disciples see the Kingdom drawing near in Christ and their eyes begin to be opened to his identity and what that means, whilst other seemingly more likely candidates see nothing.  So Jesus praises his Father.

But as the passage goes on a deeper foundation is revealed.  How is it that God is made known through Jesus?  It is because all things have been entrusted to him by the Father, and "no knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son desires to reveal him."  The foundation of the revelation of God accomplished in Jesus is the relationship between the Father and the Son from eternity.  Because the Father knows the Son, and the Son knows the Father, the Son is really able to make the Father known, and it is the Father's good pleasure that he do so.

To put it another way, nobody truly knows God except God - how can a creature really know the Creator?  But God really does know God - the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit know one another, and know in one another the fullness of Deity which they equally and together possess and are.  God knows God.  But in the incarnation, that divine knowledge of God - the only knowledge of God which can be true - has been repeated as human knowledge.  The Son knows the Father now as a human being knows, but as the same Person and in the same relationship of total knowledge that he always had.  And when anyone else comes to know the Father through Jesus, or to see who Jesus is in relation to the Father, it is the opening up of that relationship of knowledge through the Holy Spirit so that more human beings can now truly say they know God - not in themselves, but by virtue of and in dependence on the human knowledge of the Father incarnate in the Son.

Jesus tells his disciples - just one verse before this passage - not to rejoice in the success of their mission but in the deeper truth that they belong to the kingdom.  I think here, perhaps, we see the Lord rejoicing not just in the fact that God is being made known, but in the deeper truth of his relationship with the Father - and therefore truly rejoicing in the Holy Spirit, the Person who represents most deeply the communion of Father and Son within the Godhead.  And how we should rejoice when we realise just what relationship of knowledge and love it is that we are drawn into when we glimpse something of the glory of God in the fact of Jesus Christ.

Particular text, particular context

On special occasions we often reach for doctrinal preaching - it's Good Friday, let's preach on atonement; it's Easter, let's preach on resurrection - and that's all well and good, but I was reminded this past Friday of the advantage of preaching through books of the Bible.  I'd arranged it so that our series in Luke's Gospel would reach the crucifixion in Holy Week and the resurrection on Easter Sunday, and I'm glad I did.  I noticed on Good Friday particularly that preaching Luke's account in the context of the series helped me to see some things I might otherwise have missed.

For example, Luke - in common with the other Synoptic Gospels - records the three hours of darkness which accompanied Christ's execution.  Maybe it's because I've run a few Christianity Explored courses, or maybe it's just because I'm a veteran of the Substitution Wars, but I instinctively read this darkness against the backdrop of the darkness in Egypt - as an expression of the wrath of God against sin.  I think that is, in fact, in the background, but the more immediate framing in Luke's narrative is rather different, determined by the saying of Jesus to his captors, recorded in Luke 22:53.  The darkness represents, then, the (Satanic) power of the opposition to Jesus, risen to its final terrible height at the crucifixion.  To know that Christ endured the weight of all the forces of darkness in the hour of their power is actually reassuring in a different way, particularly at this hour of darkness.

Then again, preaching from a particular passage helps to avoid the danger of reductionism in doctrine.  It is very easy to get to a position where your whole understanding of a certain doctrine - or at least, your way of expressing it - depends on one particular strand of the biblical witness.  For example, the cry of dereliction easily becomes the dominant way of explaining the cross and the atonement.  But if you're preaching the cross from Luke, there is no cry of dereliction.  Rather there is an expression of faith as Jesus resigns his spirit confidently into the hands of his Father.  Of course the Gospel accounts are selective - it is entirely possible for Jesus to have said both things - and there is no contradiction.  But taking the particular perspective of this particular text in preaching the cross means that you may have to reach beyond your normal shorthand for explaining the atonement and look at it from a different angle.

There is definitely a place for synthetic doctrinal preaching - preaching that tries to give a rounded theological account of the whole witness of Holy Scripture on a particular doctrinal point.  But I am more convinced than ever that it needs to play second place to consecutive exposition of Biblical texts.

An idle tale

An aspect of the Easter story which I didn't touch on in my brief sermon on Sunday is the initial reaction of Jesus' followers to the news of the resurrection.  We are continuing a long-running series in Luke's Gospel, so picked up the story from Luke 24:1-12.  The women go to the tomb; the stone is moved and the body missing; two angels appear who proclaim the resurrection of Christ.  And then, naturally, they go tell the male disciples.

Who don't believe a word of it.

The way Luke tells the story, they weren't violently opposed to the idea of Jesus being raised; they didn't feel the need to argue about why it was impossible.  They didn't engage with the message at all.  It seemed like nothing more than an idle tale.  A fantasy.

Partly I guess we're seeing the reaction of a misogynistic culture.  As many preachers will no doubt have pointed out at the weekend, the testimony of a woman was automatically suspect in the ancient world, and legally inadmissible.  And of course such attitudes persist.  But I don't think that's the heart of it.

The disciples of Jesus find it easy to dismiss rumours of his resurrection because they know that this sort of thing does not happen.  Their indifference to the report of the women is motivated by the exact same force which lies behind much contemporary rejection of the same report: it doesn't happen that way.  People die and stay dead.  That's just the way it is.

I find this reaction encouraging in some ways.  The first Christians weren't naive; they didn't belong to a time where resurrections were believable.  Bear in mind that according to the Gospel writers, these disciples had witnessed Jesus raising people from death to life; they had also heard his promise that he himself would rise on the third day.  But this was not enough to overcome the basic human intuition, backed up by overwhelming experience, that death is a one-way trip.  The only thing that did overcome it was an encounter with the risen Jesus himself.  To me this makes their testimony more believable.  They were sceptics too, and had to be won over.

I suspect that in some ways it was harder for them than it is for us.  We've had centuries to become accustomed to the idea of Christ rising, even if we still regard it as an idle tale.  As N.T. Wright tirelessly points out, the first disciples knew what resurrection was; it was something which would occur at the end, when everyone would rise to judgement.  This resurrection, of a singular person, was not it.  It ran contrary to everything they knew about the world, just as, for different reasons, it runs contrary to what we know about the world.

But is it an idle tale, though?  Was the world turned upside down, were millions of lives changed, by an idle tale?  Was it a fantasy which brought this all about?

Which story, in the end, is more unbelievable?

Jesus wept

On Sunday our series in Luke at CCC finally reached Jerusalem, as we tackled 19:11-48.  I was struck again, as I have been before, by the way Jesus reacts as he comes over the hill and the holy city comes in sight: he bursts into tears.  Jerusalem, the city literally named after peace, has not chosen peace; the city which looked forward to the coming of the Messianic King has not recognised him or accepted him.  So Jesus wept over Jerusalem.

In Luke's Gospel this is the second lament over Jerusalem.  The first occurs in 13:31-35, and is if anything even more startling.  Jesus grieves over the city which kills the prophets and stones those sent to it as divine messengers.  And then he expresses his own frustration: "How often I would have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you would not."  It seems clear that when Jesus expresses his frustrated desire here he is referring not to anything that has happened in his earthly ministry, but to his actions as the eternal Word of God, the one who sent those prophets.  In other words, this is a concise summary of the Old Testament: the Word of God repeatedly reached out to rebellious Jerusalem to save and gather in, but Jerusalem was having none of it.

Just two observations:

Firstly, however we state our doctrine of the sovereignty of God, we are on dangerous ground if we rule out the idea that sin in some sense thwarts or turns aside the will of God.  Some strong statements of the doctrine of God's sovereignty - a doctrine, by the way, which I love and will happily defend and proclaim - make it sound like God stands symmetrically behind good and evil, behind the gracious turning of the penitent and the grievous hardening of the sinner.  I  don't think that is compatible with what Jesus reveals of God here.  I think we need to be willing to hold in tension that God will work his purposes out, and that God's will is in some sense frustrated.  Again, that God is sovereign means that ultimately this also is not symmetrical; he will triumph, will have his people, will work out all his good pleasure.  But it's a denial of revelation to rush to that point, or to allow it to undo the tension.  (I wonder whether the desire to reset the gospel as a system and not a narrative, which ends up effectively stripping it of eschatological force and forward momentum, might not lie behind this somewhere.)

Second, Jesus reveals God.  We can never say this too much.  If you want to know what God is like, look at Jesus.  If you want to know the heart of God, look at the tear-stained face of Jesus.  If we cannot read the character of God from the character of Jesus, then I do not believe we can know it at all.  That Christ weeps over Jerusalem - and he doesn't weep for himself, despite knowing what it coming, but he weeps over the city that has always rejected him and will finally hand him over for crucifixion - that Christ Jesus weeps over this city is a revelation of his love, and his love is the very love of God.

Demons and Disease

Some notes I pulled together whilst preparing to preach Luke 8:26-56 at CCC yesterday. The bottom line I arrived at was that, in our theological circles, an undisciplined supernaturalism is probably not the main problem; an incipient rationalism is more threatening. We (I!) need to ask for and expect more from God.

The whole Bible gives us a picture of (usually) unseen spiritual powers at work throughout the world, some representing God and working to advance his will, others opposing God. The ‘good’ spirits are generally referred to as angels, and the ‘evil’ spirits are demons. A development through the Bible is that Satan or the Devil is increasingly regarded as the ‘leader’ of the demons. Sometimes pagan gods are called demons in the Old Testament, and the New Testament picks this up in its assumption that demons stand behind the idols of the ancient world.

In the twenty-first century West, there is a tendency not to talk about angels or demons very much, even within the church. That is mainly because our culture is materialistic and naturalistic – that is, what we can see is all there is, and what happens can be fully explained by natural causes. In Christian circles, of course, there is at least a theoretical knowledge that this isn’t so – God is a spiritual being who interacts with the world! But we have absorbed enough from our culture to feel uncomfortable with the idea of angels and demons active around us. It all sounds a bit fairy-tale, and we worry that we won’t be taken seriously.

There’s another reason to feel awkward about talking about demons especially. Increasingly we are becoming aware that in different cultures – and in segments of our own – people who are accused of being demon possessed are abused and mistreated. There have been several horrific stories involving children. Certainly we don’t want to be implicated in things like that.

A few things to say about the Bible’s teaching on demons:

1. Demons are real and powerful. You can’t read the Bible and avoid the reality of evil spiritual forces.

2. Demons are fallen creatures. The spiritual forces of evil – and even Satan himself – are God’s creatures, albeit fallen and horribly twisted. We must say that they were created good, because God does not create anything evil. We can also say that because they are creatures they are not in any sense equal with God.

3. Demons are against humanity. When we see demonic activity in the Bible, it is always geared towards enslaving and dehumanising God’s human creations. The Bible says nothing about human beings colluding with demons; when Jesus casts out demons from people, the people themselves are always seen as victims.

4. Demons are powerless before Jesus. In the storyline of the Bible, by far the most demonic activity is clustered around Jesus. It makes sense that the evil spirits would want to oppose Jesus. But in story after story, Jesus drives out demons with just a word. They can’t stand up to him. Nor can they stand up to his disciples, when they are acting in dependence and faith.

Practically, there are a few helpful things we can say:

1. When we see evil in the world, we should acknowledge that there is a spiritual dimension to that evil. We don’t need to leap too quickly to demons (human beings have a spiritual dimension, and are quite capable of doing plenty of their own evil), but nor do we need to rule them out. They are part of reality.

2. We don’t need to become too interested in demons, either to fear them or to hunt them down. We are not encouraged to engage with demons, but to preach the good news of Jesus – and it is that good news which defeats the demons anyway.

3. If we do suspect we have encountered demonic activity, the thing to do is trust and pray. Jesus is victorious.

The reasons we avoid talking about angels and demons are broadly the same as the reasons we don’t talk much about miraculous healing: we have taken in a big dose of materialism and naturalism from the surrounding culture, and we have seen Christian talk about miraculous healing being horribly abused (for example, by faith healers who make a great deal of money out of sick people, or in churches where people’s expectations of healing have been cruelly raised only to be dashed). But the New Testament is full of healings. What do we do with that?

A few thoughts:

1. Even in the NT, not everyone is healed. In a sense, that’s obvious: Jesus was only in one place, and for every person in Galilee who got healed, there were thousands in the world who stayed sick or died. But even around Jesus, not everyone was healed. And even the Apostle Paul was not healed of bodily ailments.

2. Although sometimes in the NT healing is a response to faith, sometimes there is no mention at all of faith, and the initiative seems to come completely from Jesus or the apostles. It is true that Jesus could not do many miracles where he met with determined unbelief, but it is also true that genuine faith does not always receive healing in the Bible.

3. The best way to see the healings in the Bible – and sometimes this is made explicit – is that they are signs. When Jesus heals someone from physical illness, it is a sign of the resurrection. Even when people like Lazarus were raised from the dead, they would die again; but their raising was a sign of the raising up at the last day which Jesus would bring about through the power of his own resurrection.

4. Because the message of the resurrection is true, and because the Lord Jesus still graciously gives us signs of that truth in the present age, we should not hesitate to pray for healing, with faith that God is able to do this, and the knowledge that it is ‘the sort of thing’ that God does.

5. When people are healed miraculously, we should praise God – this is all his grace – and we should receive the mercy of healing as a sign of God’s greater mercy in offering eternal life through his Son. When people are not healed miraculously, we should still look to the greater mercy: God offers eternal life with him, next to which physical healing is a small thing.